Mohamed E.B., who stands accused of beating his wife to death, faces 25 years’ imprisonment. The incident occurred in Alhama de Granada in 2010.

The autopsy showed that Fatima E.K. died of multiple head wounds – 16 of them – produced by repeated blows with a bed leg. The accused claimed before the jury that he only remembered hitting her once; after that, nothing. He also remembers that she had insulted him.

According to him, his 17 years of marriage had always been good up until the last two years when the relationship deteriorated because, he explained, he had thrown her brother out of their house. He had done this, he claimed, because the brother-in-law was a drug dealer.

He recounted that on the morning of the incident, the three children had left for school and he and his wife were left alone. He explained how she had begun moving furniture around because she was intending to leave him and move to a house that the Town Hall had provided.

“I loved her very much and I only wanted to help but she wouldn’t talk to me,” he said, adding, “Then she said that she didn’t even want to see me and that I was a son of a bitch in Arabic, which is a very strong insult in our culture.”

“I got very angry and lost control,” he said, whilst assuring the jury that he had never laid a finger on her before. At this point he snatched a bed leg from her hand; she had been dismantling a bed, and hit her on the head with it. After that, he remembers nothing, he says, and later seeing what he had done, wanted to end his own life by taking an overdose of pills or drinking bleach – something that he evidently did not do. He even tried to bring her round, but seeing that she was dead, he changed his blood-soaked clothes and then phoned the Guardia Civil, sat down, and waited for them to arrive.

When cross examined by the private accusation lawyer on whether it was true that he did not bring any money into the house for its upkeep or that of his children, he denied it. Asked whether he admitted to having taken 600 euros from his wife’s handbag after killing her, he denied it too. Finally, he also denied having threatening to kill her two days previously.

He said that he had never had problems with the police before and that he repented a million times for having killed her: “I just wish that the earth would open up now and swallow me.”

(News: Alhama de Granada, Poniente de Granada, Andalucia)